My plan for finding an agent:

1. Figure out who I am as a writer and develop a writing business plan. Read and do all the exercises Jenny Crusie laid out in her wonderful essay “It’s all about you: the first step in finding an agent“
2. Research, research, research. Ask for recommendations from writer friends, read up on what agents are selling via Publishers Marketplace and their sites, and read agent blogs
3. Send out queries and start interviewing

A short list but lots of work. I’ve begun steps one and two; if you’re interested, my list of agent blogs is now posted in the sidebar of this site. (I’ve also added all of these blogs into my public Google Reader feed if you’d like to check them out there.)

What do you look for in an agent? I’m still coming up with my list (see step 1 above), but so far I know I’d like to find an agent:

• techie enough to accept email queries
• with a sense of humor
• who’s driven and professional
• with high standards and high expectations
• and flexible enough to grow with me over time as I develop my career

Am I just extraordinarily stubborn? or does everyone learn primarily through screwing shit up?

I’ve decided all my outlines and cards and timelines are bunk and I need an actual honest to god synopsis to make sure I’m on track on this manuscript. I’m feeling good about it scene-by-scene, as I’m writing, then I walk away from the computer at night and lay in bed eyes with eyes wide open thinking Shit. Shit. Shit. I’m drifting. I’m on a tangent. I’m not sticking to the theme. What’s the theme? Shit. Shit. Etc.

So, synopsis time. I swear I frustrate me — it seems I am incapable of learning from a teacher. I need to break every rule and flaunt every piece of advice and prove to myself through protracted, brutal personal experience that the way they tell you how to do it really is the best and easiest way to do it. AGH. If I’d done a freaking synopsis 16 months ago….. grr.

And yet, ha. HA! Because it will be better now. I will be better now. Ha!

Do people use blogs for the purpose of having a searchable bank of plot, character and other story ideas? If not, why not? Isn’t that a kick-ass idea? Here’s where I’m coming from…

So, don’t know if you follow Jenny Crusie’s blog but she’s started a new one with two other writers - they’re all collaborating on a book and posting pretty much everything they’re doing in that collaboration online. They chat via IM every Sunday night and post their entire chats. It’s pretty interesting though a huge amount of info/brainstorming to follow.

http://dogsandgoddesses.com/

I’ve recently begun playing around with the idea of collaborating on a story - more on that when it’s more fleshed out - but anyway, seeing Jenny Crusie’s blog made me think, hmm, my partner and I could do this just to have idea-bank. Iit’s not like we’d have an audience like Jenny C and team, but that’s not the point. We’d have a searchable place to both dump ideas - hell, this would work even if they’re just notes I’m keeping for myself. I love my Moleskine notebooks, but they’re not very easy to reference as I’m insanely disordered and don’t have any kind of system. HMM!

Not long ago Austin RWA brought Lori Wilde in to speak about high concept, and how her mastery of the technique sold a manuscript sight unseen. I don’t want to repeat Lori’s talk, nor replicate the contents of her handbook (visit her site to buy a copy of your own, I highly recommend it) but I’ve been adapting bits and pieces for my own use that I have to record somewhere other than a tiny brown Moleskine for my own sanity. So here ya go.

The purpose of this exercise is to create a single paragraph teaser description of your story, which will be used to sell it. Here’s how to construct the paragraph:

1. Describe a well motivated, dynamic character involved in a specific occupation or situation,
2. with a flaw for that will present her with the most problems in that situation or occupation.
3. Introduce an incident that forces her to act or react, choosing between the flaw and some opportunity. The incident is passive - something that happens to her.
4. How she reacts is different than your normal Joe, but
5. due to a quirk of fate or ironic twist, her actions do not have the anticipated effect.

The important thing to note here is this isn’t meant to describe your entire story. It’s a teaser, it’s the “hook” everyone’s always talking about. Here’s how it would work for Romancing The Stone. (Ideally, the tone of the paragraph should reflect the tone of the story, but I didn’t try to do that here - one thing at a time, right?)

A romance writer who’s afraid to act on her dreams gets a desperate call from her kidnapped sister begging her to deliver a treasure map as ransom. Instead of calling the authorities, she rushes to Colombia carrying the map, where a quirk of fate sends her hundreds of miles in the wrong direction… and into the arms of her own personal hero.

This exercise is really hard to do for your own manuscript. Writers know so much about their own work that picking out just these a few details is like being asked to choose the best five hairs on your child’s head. But it’s worth it.

A good short teaser description can be used in query letters, during a pitch to an editor or agent, or over pink jello surprise when your great aunt Marge asks what you’re writing for the eighteen-thousandth time. It can also help focus the arc of your story during planning or revisions. Best of all, it puts you in control over the initial excitement and expectations of your readers.

Try it. Star Wars. Back To The Future. War of the Worlds. Oliver Twist. The Godfather. Animal House. Dazed and Confused, anyone?

I have a confession. When I was in high school, I fell passionately in love with Regency romances, those sweet, silly, virgin-finds-a-man-in-the-early-1800’s novels that have fallen out of favor in recent years. I’m not sad that they’re gone. Historical romances set in the Regency or during the slightly longer period covered by the Napoleonic Wars have taken their place, and deliver a more realistic, grown-up view of the world that I find far more satisfying now that I’m thirty-six instead of sixteen.

God. Twenty years.

Back then, one of my favorite authors, one of the authors whose books lined my bookshelves, whose books I read over and over, whose books my best friend Doug would take down and use to test me by reading the description to see if I could name the title and author - one of those authors was April Kihlstrom.

She wrote books with titles like “An Improper Companion,” “Captain Rogue” and “The Nabob’s Widow.” I can still picture the demure heroines and buttoned-up gentlemen drawn in bright, comforting colors on the covers. No breasts or mussed hair or windswept landscapes on those covers, no sir. Just genteel women, descending from tidy barouches with one gloved hand barely touching a gentleman’s hand.

Luckily for me, though Regency romances, as such, have since disappeared, April Kihlstrom has not. In fact, she’s a member of my local RWA chapter, and I’ve actually met her and had the chance to hear her speak.

April’s an inspiring speaker, and one of her workshops, Book In A Week, made a particular impression on me. The idea is, you devote yourself to writing for a week. You still have your normal life - you go to work, eat, sleep, all that - but you spend every minute possible, writing. All forward, no back - no revisions, no pausing, no tweaking to make it better, just writing writing writing in order to get a draft done.

Of course most people don’t actually finish a draft, but no matter what, you end up writing a lot more than normal. There’s a technique to it, and a lot of tips and tricks that April shares which makes it more possible than im-, but them’s the basics. Write, write, write. For a week.

I’ve done it once before and wrote ~70 pages in a time period that would normally have yielded less than 20 at best.

It’s time to go again.

Yep. I’m a glutton for hurt. Despite the whinings of my earlier post, I’ve pushed on, revised, and sent the damned thing off to two more contests.

In these I included an “optional set-up page.” I used the opportunity to describe the manuscript as a whole and get down with ye olde marketing-speak. I’m still cringing after reading it over a few dozen times, but while I still have it open, here it is for your amusement. I will not be revisiting this anytime soon.

Ellie Chandler has found her groove as part-owner and hidden talent behind Graphic/Love, the hot graphic-novel-style personals service that’s resulted in more L.A. hookups than two-buck Cosmo night. As a chick who’s sworn off sex and plans to leave love on the cutting room floor, she has no man-drama – then beach-bum Jonas, the one-night stand she swore she’d never see again, shows up on her doorstep wanting into her life and into her short-shorts.

Female personals advertisers start falling ill en masse, someone’s pressuring her to write a book about her jailbird parents, venture capitalists swirl like buzzards around Graphic/Love and her business partner’s bent on seducing a cop. Persistent, delicious Jonas starts to feel like the one reliable hunk in her universe. But is he what he seems? And can she trust herself enough to let go and find out?

My good friend Heather recently finaled in the Four Seasons contest, meaning that her submission is going to be read by an editor at Harlequin — hooray! Getting a partial read by an editor is a prize in and of itself, potentially leading to her manuscript being published and fame and fortune and all the other good things that follow. I’m so excited for her I can barely contain it. I’m sure she’s going to be published this year - she’s been working hard and her story’s great, so it only follows that the World Must Know. And heap praise and cash upon her, of course.

I myself had not entered any contests, feeling totally unable to put my manuscript out there for review - but Heather has inspired me. Contests, here I come! Yesterday I saw an opportunity to submit to the Central Ohio Fiction Writers’ “Ignite the Flame” contest, so I dived in and sent off my first 10+ pages.

And I felt good. I felt damned good. I went to sleep happy and optimistic and filled with excitement about all the other contests I’d wake up this morning and enter.

Yikes.

Can there be anything more depressing than re-reading your work the morning after you’ve sent off multiple printed hard copies to a contest? What was I thinking? The urge to revise is overpowering. The urge to call up the nice contest ladies and tell them to toss the envelope unopened on a bonfire dedicated to the Goddess of Lousy Prose comes in a close second.

I suppress both urges by writing a blog post, but this is just putting off the inevitable. I’m going to have to send this in again and again! I’m going to be rejected, again and again!

Rejection’s not a puppy. I don’t think it’s cute and I do feel the urge to kick it.